Falling Down (Blu-ray book) (Warner Bros., 1993/2009)
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He’s made some good movies (The Lost Boys), some overrated movies (St. Elmo’s Fire), and some offensively shitty movies (Batman & Robin), most of which have made lots and lots of money — but it’s my contention that Joel Schumacher has never (and most likely will never) make another film as timely, smart, and important as 1993’s Falling Down. If you still remember the helpless dread that filled your soul during Batman & Robin, the idea that the same man was also responsible for something as well-made as Falling Down is still a little hard to swallow, but no matter how hard he’s tried to hide it, there’s an auteur lurking beneath Schumacher’s apparently unquenchable thirst for garishly framed bozo flicks, and more than any of his other detours down more esoteric filmmaking paths, this movie proves it.
No one is more uncomfortable admitting this than I am. As you may have guessed, Batman & Robin ranks as one of the most painful experiences I’ve ever had in a theater; I didn’t hate it enough to walk out mid-screening — that honor remains reserved for Eddie Murphy’s Metro, a movie so bad that the audience at my showing booed when it came back on after being paused while paramedics evacuated a man suffering a heart attack — but still, revisiting Falling Down on Blu-ray was a profoundly disorienting experience for me. What happened to this Schumacher? The one who was so good at putting you in a place? Here, Schumacher makes Los Angeles an unwritten character, using the oppressive summer heat and shittiness of the city brilliantly in every frame. In a film full of weapons, Schumacher wields the mid-day sun as perhaps the most lethal of all. (more…)

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